Several times in the last month, I’ve been asked to tackle an interesting real estate financial modeling challenge – pare actual construction draw cash flows with s-curve cash flow forecasts to create an Actuals + Forecast Construction Draw schedule. The real challenge in this exercise, is to have the actual construction draws transition into the […]
As we approach the end of the year, it’s a time many of us pause to reflect and plan for the future. In my own career, I’ve always found the transition into a new year to be a prime opportunity for setting ambitious yet achievable goals. This year, I took a slightly different approach. Inspired by […]
Across a 22+ year career in the industry, I’ve encountered a range of complex scenarios that traditional metrics sometimes struggle to accurately capture. A case in point that has been top of mind for me recently is a weakness in the Equity Multiple, a metric fundamental to our understanding of investment performance but often lacking […]
In commercial real estate investing, the ability to forecast an asset’s potential cash flows, anticipate market trends and make accurate predictions is essential – especially in an environment of flat or rising rates. This skill, sometimes referred to as ‘superforecasting,’ is something I’ve been actively working to master in my own career. One of my […]
I’ve spent the past few weekends working on a purpose-built Self Storage Acquisition Model, and I’m now happy to share the result of that work with you. This is a model that’s been requested by quite a few A.CRE readers over the past few years. I released a Self Storage Development Model last year, and […]
We’ve shared a handful of apartment models over the years. Several of those are capable of analyzing apartment acquisitions but none was built for the express purpose of modeling value-add apartment deals. As a result, each has its limitations in value-add scenarios. So today, I’m excited to share a new apartment model; this one built […]
Generally speaking, equity real estate investors spend their time modeling the upside while their debt partners spend their time modeling the downside. Equity investors generally focus on an investment’s internal rate of return, cash-on-cash return, equity multiple and other return metrics while debt investors focus on debt coverage, loan to value, debt yield and refinance […]
I feel a personal sense of urgency around mastering generative AI for use in real estate. It’s clear to me that this technology will fundamentally change how we operate within the industry, and I want to ensure I’m on the front end of that change. As a result, I’m regularly taking courses that expand my […]
Traditionally in commercial real estate, each organization builds its own proprietary sales comp database and then gives its analysts access to that database in order to perform comp analysis. As AI becomes more and more important, pairing the analyst team with AI tools to speed/improve that real estate analysis is essential. Thus, at the individual […]
In early 2023, we here at A.CRE began exploring use cases for AI in commercial real estate. Since that time, we have released nine such posts covering topics such as using AI in the real estate job search, using AI to expand on Excel’s capabilities, using AI for real estate research, etc. However, this post […]
If you’re an A.CRE reader, you know we’re actively exploring the numerous use cases for generative AI in commercial real estate. As part of those efforts, we’ve used ChatGPT to help us build a custom Excel add-in for CRE professionals, used ChatGPT as an analyst to assess sale comps and create a lease abstract, asked […]
The topic of analyzing commercial real estate leases from the perspective of the landlord and/or tenant has come up several times over the years. And while I generally respond to requests for new models or tools at A.CRE, I’ve been hesitant to build this particular tool. The reason is that my experience is heavily landlord […]
Here’s the scenario. You’re a real estate developer. You spot a prime parcel of land that would be perfect for your real estate project. So you approach the owner of the land about selling and she says, “Okay, bring me an offer.” How much do you pay? What is the land even worth to you? […]
If you’ve spent much time working with elaborate Excel workbooks that rely on iterative calculations to solve formulas with circular logic, you’ve undoubtedly come across a problem where if you accidently put an erroneous value in an input cell that the circular logic relies on, the entire workbook errors out permanently. This can be incredibly frustrating […]
As part of our ongoing series of YouTube Shorts, we recently published a video about the importance of keeping a personal commercial real estate deal sheet (see video below). In this context, a real estate deal sheet is a comprehensive list of investments that a real estate professional has worked on in their career. The […]